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The Official Turbografx 16 Thread!


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13 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

 

 

I personally think the Turbo Duo is one of the Coolest looking systems of all time!

 

 

My PC-Engine Duo-R looks pretty sweet too,  but there's something about the Duo...

I don't know, maybe?  But of all the consoles over the years, especially when in a time people tried to be totally 70s 80s or 90s by design, that Duo JP/US with the same form factor was done in a sleek manner that has aged better than the rest. The charcoal gray to black tone to it, sleek smooth design, it isn't an eye sore, but also not an eye catch, it's subtle and inoffensive.  You'd never know if someone had a game system, if that's all they had, and the games and pads were in a drawer.  That's just the sign of a smart design, not some gaudy showpiece.

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12 hours ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Did they fix the issue with them not working with the multitap?

 

I think you have to have friends before you can use a MultiTap ? haaa!...I've actually never tried it.   Is it one of the controllers or the adapter that has the MultiTap issues?

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3 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

 

I think you have to have friends before you can use a MultiTap ? haaa!...I've actually never tried it.   Is it one of the controllers or the adapter that has the MultiTap issues?

The Oldskool controllers would not work with the multitap.

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Interesting!

 

I've had the MultiTap hooked up once for some 4 (or was it 5?) player Bomberman and it was a frikkin Blast!  (Heh... pun),  but that was some time ago...Long before I got these controllers.  I do have 2 friends en route to the house right now, but I think we have other plans :)

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6 hours ago, GoldLeader said:

Interesting!

 

I've had the MultiTap hooked up once for some 4 (or was it 5?) player Bomberman and it was a frikkin Blast!  (Heh... pun),  but that was some time ago...Long before I got these controllers.  I do have 2 friends en route to the house right now, but I think we have other plans :)

Yeah Bomberman is 5 players. Well I know Bomberman '93 is... not sure if the first game is.

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Speaking of looks, I recently reacquired a PC Engine (CoreGrafx to be exact) because I had ordered a Super HD System 3 Pro when they were first available, and while I appreciate the overall aesthetics are of the time, I still marvel at the compact size. I mean, we all know how badly the US release of the TG-16 was implemented, but it truly is a shame how they bulked up the console design. They could have really played up how state of the art the system was with the more compact size and matching game cards (which I still maintain are the best looking cartridge "cases" ever released). Of course, that was all secondary to not being able to get the right games in the US, but the fact remains that that was one of the truly unnecessary changes they ultimately made. 

Edited by Bill Loguidice
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7 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

The US got plenty of great games. The Sega games were a loss, but what can you do?

They needed some of the bigger/better titles here in the US, not just the Sega games (frankly, I wasn't even thinking of those, and some of course did make it out in the US), but that's a discussion for a different thread (certainly it was a different time in terms of confidence in bringing Japanese-centric stuff to the US). I actually got a TG-16 before getting a Genesis, but quickly made the Genesis my primary system. Once the SNES was out, it was pretty much those two for me over the TG-16. I suspect I would have had more time with the TG-16 as a primary system if more of the games from Japan had been localized for here. It certainly wasn't a bad line-up, but was definitely more of a those-in-the-know system because of what the rival systems had available here in the US. 

Edited by Bill Loguidice
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Yeah, but there wasn’t that much in the Japanese lineup that would have turned the tide here. Launching with Keith Courage was an awful idea, but then launching with Altered Beast was also an awful idea.

 

I think the genres that the PC Engine and Super CD had an early advantage in (RPGs, shmups) were not so popular here, and the other systems eventually caught up and sometimes surpassed it in one (SNES RPGs) or both (Genesis and Sega CD shmups and RPGs) anyway. Hudson and NEC just weren’t able to keep up with Nintendo and Sega at their peak.

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15 hours ago, DragonGrafx-16 said:

Yeah Bomberman is 5 players. Well I know Bomberman '93 is... not sure if the first game is.

I think all 3 of them are, it was a good pitch with the turbotap as the best anyone else could hope for at the time was 4 with the SNES bomberman headed(or not) tap.

 

@jgkspsx I very much agree the Sega games were a loss, but you're minimizing or not knowing greatly how bad the loss really was that was NOT sega.  Sure the companies in general didn't put as many of their games on there, still probably Nintendo contract creep fears, I have no idea exactly, but there are so many games that would have sold great in the states, largely many not even needing translation (or minimal.)  Capcom had SF2CE and 1941, Tecmo farmed out that Ninja Gaiden title Hudson handled in their numbered releases.  Konami had all those amazing shooters and Dracula X too -- no Gradius, Twinbee, Salamander, eh??

 

This is me doing a random skim of the A-Z off a couple sites to refresh my memory but... Aero Blasters, Alice in Wonderdream, Blue Blink, Atomic Robo Kid, Barunba, their version of Batman, Battle Lode Runner, Bomberman 94(Genesis only go it...dumb), Coryoon, Cosmic Fantasy 1 & 3-4Ch1+2 (we got 2 on CD it was great!), Crest of Wolf, Darius Plus and/or Alpha, Don Doko Don, Double Dragon II, the various Kunio titles it got like Dodgeball, Dragon Egg!, Dragon Knight series, and that's just A-D.   I  don't want to make a massive list, but all these would either take not much translation or virtually to no translation to get going and there are parallels to these Nintendo had in the day, a few on Sega too.... so what the f?  It's not like they were releasing risky dangerous to fail stuff had these been pushed.

 

SNK had quite a few of their arcade fighters stuffed on there, far better releases than any home version outside of the NeoCD/AES which says a lot.  As others said, the space ship fighters/shooters they're insane on here, shame the Genesis quite nicely, they're tops and sold like crazy in that era in the US too.  I mean it would be a huge list but I could keep going, E's nothing really lacking, short list, but right into F, why no Faceball? Why no Fire Pro Wrestling?

 

Had the SGX worked out, sheesh...beefed up Strider, Ghouls n Ghosts, another 194X title...short list, no turds, and assuming they wouldn't be floundering on that and the PC-FX debacle having done far better, more and more premium SGX games would have rolled out.

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I’m not saying that the games that got left in Japan were not great - I have more Japanese exclusives than American releases at this point - but I don’t think they would have changed the outcome. How many copies did Aero Blasters or Ordyne, two great games that WERE brought over, sell? How many copies did Sagaia or other great shmups sell on the Genesis? Not that many or I could afford to buy decent copies ?

 

Quality control might have been a bigger problem. An unusual proportion of the games brought over were turds. Why was that?

 

It’s possible that fear of Nintendo held back third parties in the early going and then it was rapidly too late to salvage. In those days three-horse races just didn’t work out well for third place. It wasn’t until the Dreamcast/Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era that the market could support three systems. But they certainly compounded their problems with the intentional hardware incompatibility and the confusing buzzwords. If they had released one global system, their chances definitely would have been better.

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The turd choices were NEC USA alone, they made choices, very poor ones not directed by the overseas office from what I've read over the years.  It was kind of like how Sega fouled up the SMS royally leaving it to Tonka to mess it up so badly they had no way to come back in the NA market, and by the time they fired them and used their own presence, it was done and they had decided to forget it and get going on the Genesis US existence instead.

 

Nintendo definitely held back third parties, it's documented, at least in the US, which surely kept some of them out, but not all.  The SMS had some games the NES got, overlap from Rampage to Klax to Double Dragon, Ys and others.  There clearly were ways, and NEC already had a leg up on that due to Nintendo shenanigans in the motherland.  Remember all those Capcom, Konami, Tecmo and other games commonly cave out from NEC Avenue as the publisher, if not the developer with direct co-op from the original company (like Nintendo did a few years later with RARE-DKC and Retro-Metroid Prime even later.)  There are ways to dodge shitty tactics and fear moves with contracts, NEC knew it, at home.  Even Sega put their stuff out, not from them, but also from NEC Avenue too, look at the game boxes.

Edited by Tanooki
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Define somewhat.

 

I would start with homebrew that’s still available like Pyramid Plunder and Insanity: http://www.aetherbyte.com/aetherbyte-software.html

 

Space Ava 201: https://nicole-express.itch.io/space-ava-201

 

Jessie Jaeger in Cleopatra’s Curse: https://www.boldgamestudio.com/product-page/jessie-jaeger-in-cleopatra-s-curse

 

FX Unit Yuki: the Henshin Engine: https://www.sarumaru.com/product/fx-unit-yuki-pce-or-dc

 

Meteor Blaster and Hypernova Blast: http://mindrec.com/?main=store/index.php

 

Implode: http://www.gooddealgames.com/inventory/Turbografx.html 

 

And Mysterious Song if you can find it.

 

Also, CDs have no region lock, so go to town on Japanese CDs!

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On 7/5/2021 at 1:26 PM, jgkspsx said:

 Launching with Keith Courage was an awful idea, but then launching with Altered Beast was also an awful idea.

Not to derail anything but to be quite honest, in the summer/fall of 1988, both those games were pretty darn cool... At least we thought so in my college dormitory. ? 
 

The sparkle faded from Keith Courage much quicker though, especially once you beat it. 

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36 minutes ago, NE146 said:

Not to derail anything but to be quite honest, in the summer/fall of 1988, both those games were pretty darn cool... At least we thought so in my college dormitory. ? 
 

The sparkle faded from Keith Courage much quicker though, especially once you beat it. 

It is funny, but no other game brings back the feeling of the "first time I saw it" like Keith Courage.  Every time I boot it up I get transported right back to the first time I heard that opening song - because that was the first time I booted up my TG16.  It's kind of weird, because I am not a big fan of the game, but the nostalgia is strong with that one.

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If I could choose a TG16 title as the pack-in from its early releases, I think Legendary Axe might have been the strongest. It doesn't have the cute appeal that Keith Courage has, but Altered Beast was definitely not cute either. Maybe it paid off that Sega pretty much exclusively targeted teenage boys at that time.

 

I think people have gotten Altered Beast fatigue in recent years due to its frequent reappearances in collections, but it was a major arcade hit at the time with some pop culture cachet as it was namechecked a few years later as the title of an album by Matthew Sweet. To have a nearly identical home conversion (improved in at least one way, with the addition of parallax backgrounds) just one year after its release in the arcades was a pretty big deal in 1989. It had the wow factor that reinforced the emphasis of 16-bit being more powerful than 8-bit, as this was new terminology to most consumers - large character sprites, huge bosses that still had backgrounds (previously, 8-bit bosses were actually drawn with background tiles and so the scene backgrounds had to be black or a solid color), stereo sound.

 

The only other approach to pack-in titles that I think might have been effective would have been to go with sports titles, as those were just beginning to hit a stride with licenses/star endorsements.

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8 hours ago, Zoyous said:

If I could choose a TG16 title as the pack-in from its early releases, I think Legendary Axe might have been the strongest. It doesn't have the cute appeal that Keith Courage has, but Altered Beast was definitely not cute either. Maybe it paid off that Sega pretty much exclusively targeted teenage boys at that time.

 

I think people have gotten Altered Beast fatigue in recent years due to its frequent reappearances in collections, but it was a major arcade hit at the time with some pop culture cachet as it was namechecked a few years later as the title of an album by Matthew Sweet. To have a nearly identical home conversion (improved in at least one way, with the addition of parallax backgrounds) just one year after its release in the arcades was a pretty big deal in 1989. It had the wow factor that reinforced the emphasis of 16-bit being more powerful than 8-bit, as this was new terminology to most consumers - large character sprites, huge bosses that still had backgrounds (previously, 8-bit bosses were actually drawn with background tiles and so the scene backgrounds had to be black or a solid color), stereo sound.

 

The only other approach to pack-in titles that I think might have been effective would have been to go with sports titles, as those were just beginning to hit a stride with licenses/star endorsements.

Maybe because I was a bit younger at the time, but Altered Beast on the Genesis did nothing for me. Golden Axe had more of that wow factor to me, but I don't remember playing the Genesis until 1990.

 

I will second Legendary Axe as a TG16 pack-in title. It holds up much better than Keith Courage, in my opinion.

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I got the best ebay deal I have gotten on turbob stuff in years last night. Now what will it look like when it shows up...who knows. But I am looking at this lot last night like, dang, too bad I don't need any of that stuff, this is a pretty good deal....then I saw the normal looking controller was actually a Laser Active controller. About $145 with tax shipped for this lot:

s-l1600.jpg

https://www.ebay.com/itm/353566901754

 

It's not THAT uncommon I see something PC-E cool and rare on ebay and have to pay up for it (My JAMMA PC-E interface, Tourvision boards and carts, weird shit like that) but an actual deal where I felt like I did really well price wise...man it has been a while. I am pretty sure I can sell everything else off and have gotten the Laser Active controller for essentially nothing if I want to.

 

 

 

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